Io non mori’, e non rimasi vivo.

Posts tagged: Television

I’ll show that Yale just who has an ugly apartment. Prepare yourselves for a virtual tour of my humble home. Today I give you, my readers, the opportunity to decide if an ugly blanket belongs in my pad.

I think the perfect place to begin is with my couch. Doesn’t it make you want to curl up with a nice book, or a martini? Or me?

Here we see what was once a plain, simple bookshelf. A nice coating of faux leopard fur jazzed it up nicely, don’t you think? Couple that with the faux giraffe drapery hanging from a bamboo pole and you have yourself a swanky soiree waiting to happen.

Here is a close-up of my bar. Cocktails, anyone?

Below the bar you can see my collection of lounge records and vintage board games. I’m always up for a game of Risk. You should totally come by some time and play me.

Let’s move along to the corner of the room now. Very lovely, isn’t it? Since this picture was taken the CD case has been moved across the room, but it looks lovely here, no?

Here are some DVDs.

This next little beauty I built myself, from scratch. Just wood, screws, hinges and so forth. And of course, faux fur. Is there *anything* that doesn’t look better when draped in fur???

Did I mention that I hot-glued faux zebra to the television? Well, actually Fizzy did. Turns out she is far more adept with a glue gun than am I. She is responsible for most of the actual attachment of fur to the various items. You go, Fizzy!

The furry TV stand opens up to reveal the stereo, as well as many vintage Tiki coasters, matchbooks, menus, and ads.

This is the other side:

I am very proud of this next part. I was able to build a sliding tray to hold a turntable! It pulls out so I can put on a record, then slides back in real good like. I done good.

The speakers, too, are covered in leopard fur. Oh, do you see the lovely blue palm frond serving dish? That dates back to the 1950s. I have no idea where those handcuffs came from. Who put those there?

Overseeing everything is the great god Tiki.

We had some leftover leopard fur, and that lamp was practically *begging* to join in the fun.

And now a nice shot that gives an overview of the entire living room. It’s that rug that really ties it all together. In the background you can sort of peek into my ’50s diner themed kitchen, but that is a post for another day.

The National Endowment for the Arts reported that the average American now spends about 24 minutes per day reading; and that includes newspapers, TV guide, recipes… everything. Worse, that same, average American watches over four hours of television each day.

My first reaction to this was dismay– how awful that Americans are such illiterate couch potatoes. It quickly turned to guilt. I don’t watch any television. That means somewhere out there exists some poor s.o.b. that I have doomed to watching EIGHT hours of TV every day. That poor guy! I envision him struggling to fit it all in to his day while still making it to work on time, sleeping, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life.

I felt even worse when I factored in how much I read each day. I spend several hours reading. That means he not only has to endure those 8 hours of television, he doesn’t even get to read at all. Maybe he has to sit and write for like 2 hours and 36 minutes a day, just to make up for my voracious reading habits. He can’t even read the back of his cereal box in the morning, assuming he even has the time to eat breakfast. Wherever you are buddy– I’m sorry.

I’ll try to post a blog that provides greater details concerning our time in New York, but suffice to say that Sue and I are enjoying ourselves here. We’ve been walking all over the island of Manhattan, catching up with friends, and generally having fun. This morning we walked up the block from our hotel in search of a diner for lunch; lo and behold, what did we see? This:

Tom’s Restaurant was famously used for the exterior shots of the diner Seinfeld and his gang frequented, but it was previously famous as the diner Suzanne Vega sang about in the early ’90s hit “Tom’s Diner.” It became famous, twice! The food there is unremarkable, which is about par for the course for any diner, really.

Last night we walked about Times Square. This one-time hotbed for sin and debauchery has become pretty doggone wholesome. One can even watch a sporting event on the massive video screen. I daresay those are the Rams engaged in a heated match against, ummm, the Pirates? I don’t really know; one team was for sure called the Rams.

I love the look of the Times Square Police Department’s sign.

That’s all I have for you at this time. I’ll return in a few days to share more pictures and stories of our trip to New York. In the meantime, help me fill in the blank above and choose an opponent for the Los Angeles, excuse me, St. Louis Rams. Today’s Question: What is your favorite football team?

My girlfriend likes to watch television. I don’t watch too much television, so I can’t promise this is the best thing on, but she has found a program that I suppose I would say is my new favorite TV show. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is the name of the show; it is most hilarious.

The premise is that five openly homosexual men enter the life of some sloppy straight guy, and attempt to spruce up his life. Each member of the team has a specialty–cooking, fashion, grooming, decorating, and pop culture), and they each work on improving one aspect of the fellow’s life. While Carson, the fashion guru, takes the schmuck out shopping for clothes, Thom, the decorator, redoes the house. And I mean he redoes it. He paints, lays down tile, buys furniture, folds and organizes clothes… in other words, he completely changes the entire home. Ted the cook whips up a feast, then teaches the fellow how to recreate it. And all along they make hilarious, catty, and often downright rude remarks.

It is a fun show to watch.

Today’s Question: If you were drafted into a lifestyle super-group (gay or straight) what would be your area of expertise?

In unrelated news, I got a new toy today called Final Scratch. It consists of two records and a device that links a mixing board into a computer. The records play a tone that the computer translates, and duplicates the action of the record with an mp3. Did that make sense? Basically, it means that if I go “wikky wikky” with the record, the mp3 goes “wikky wikky” at the same time. So I can play just those two records, and have them “become” any song I have in mp3 form on my laptop. And I can scratch, mix, backspin, adjust the pitch or EQ… everything. It’s indistinguishable from using regular records. It also comes with CDs that play the same tone, so one can mix on CD decks the same way. The end result of all this is that instead of showing up with hundreds of records or CDs, I can just bring the laptop to an event, and not only can I do anything that I could with vinyl, I have thousands of songs at my disposal; more than I could ever carry with me. This is a huge stride forward for DJs.